As professional sports tournaments enforce strict rules on the participation of amateur players, the newly-professionalized Premier Volleyball League (PVL) will still continue to cater to the country’s up-and-coming players through the V-League.

Tournament organizer Sports Vision president Ricky Palou said that the PVL has plans of reviving the V-League for the collegiate tournament during the weekly Philippine Sportswriters Association forum on Tuesday, November 17.

“We would like to revive the V-League for the collegiate tournament,” said Palou.

Before the PVL officially took over the Shakey’s V-League in 2017 and catered to commercial teams, the tournament was staged for collegiate teams from the UAAP, NCAA, and CESAFI.

Palou hopes to bring back that branding as the PVL turns professional. (READ: Professionalized PVL to kick off in a bubble)

“It might confuse people: ‘Why are these collegiate teams participating in a professional league?’ We would like to differentiate it and right now, it will depend on the management of Sports Vision if we will bring back the V-League to handle the collegiate tournament,” Palou said.

In the last 3 PVL seasons, the league has been staging a total of 3 conferences – the Open and Reinforced conferences for the commercial teams, and the Collegiate conference that acts as a preseason for the UAAP and NCAA volleyball tournaments.

Even if professional volleyball leagues abroad follow the FIVB calendar, the PVL is still adamant in syncing with the world federation because it comes in conflict with the UAAP and NCAA tournaments.

The FIVB calendar runs from October to May, while the collegiate volleyball tournaments are scheduled from November to May.

This, however, will prevent the professional PVL teams from signing foreign players who are part of their respective national teams.

Palou said that this will encourage more local players to get playing time in the league.

“We will not be ablet o get imports that belong to national teams because they prepare June to September – that’s when the international competitions are held,” explained the tournament organizer.

“We can still get imports as long as they’re not members of the national teams. We don’t want to compete with our university and college teams,” he added.

Before the pandemic put a halt to the world of sports and canceled the UAAP Season 82 volleyball tournament, the young Adamson Lady Falcons led by two-time UAAP champion coach Tai Bundit won the 2019 PVL Collegiate Conference title. – Rappler.com